Marketo Page Builder vs Unbounce

[jbickerton]

Hello there!

We are currently onboarding Marketo at the organization I work at. I've been asked to look into how the native Marketo landing page builder compares to Unbounce. There are a lot of older threads, but I'm wondering if things have changed. For example, is the Unbounce to Marketo integration still "broken"? Will Unbounce forms still not pre-fill with Marketo data? I've also read that some advanced tracking is not available only using Unbounce pages - users will need to interact with another Marketo asset for their behaviour to be associated with a record. 

I'm hoping someone who might be familiar with both could provide some insight. Personally, I like using Unbounce as the current CMS is a bit less user-friendly than others. However, if there are going to be problems with data syncing or we won't be able to use some Marketo features, would we be better off using Marketo's native builder or another product?

[Phillip_Wild]

To be honest @jbickerton I'm not familiar with Unbounce but it likely would work just fine as long as you ran the Marketo munchkin script on Unbounce pages to ensure Marketo tracking. You could also submit Marketo forms in the background as Unbounce forms are submitted. So it's likely you can pick whichever suits your workflow better, but there will be some technical work.

[SanfordWhiteman]

The built-in Unbounce → Marketo integration is as broken as ever.

There was a simple way to fix it that Todd wrote up here, but it’s since been rendered unusable by changes to the Marketo forms processing layer.

Now, like Phil says, you’d have to use a hidden Marketo form to back the visible Unbounce form. Not terribly difficult if you are/have a coder but not out-of-the-box.

[Dave_Roberts · Accepted solution]

I see this as basically one of two conditions:

1) Use any external CMS to build Landing Pages:
PRO: LPs might be a little easier to "build" using a different editor than Marketo's (which is at least a generation behind most "modern" CMS systems like Unbounce or LeadPages)
CONS: they'll require you to build and manage an integration at some point. 

2) Use Marketo to build Landing Pages:

PROS: You won't need to create custom integrations or manage syncs between two systems. 

CONS: The editor is a bit less user-friendly (depending of course on how flexible your template system is).

I'll mention that I'm of the mind that anything you could do in Unbounce (or anywhere on the web), you can do in Marketo as far as the end-result of any landing page (look, feel, functionality). If it were a vote/contest, I'd vote for Marketo LPs for me, but there's a different "right" answer for every situation.

The trade-off as I see it is that using an external CMS lowers the barrier to entry for creating and maintaining new layouts and changes to your Landing Pages (so they say, I'm looking at you Wordpress) -- at the cost of needing to integrate the two systems, which generally requires more dev work to build, maintain and troubleshoot if/when trouble arises. If you've got an expert in house and they need something more to do with their time, this tradeoff might not really matter that much -- and assuming everything works as expected.

Personally, I think less is more here, and if you can get away with fewer integration the better off you are in terms of data fidelity and being able to trust that what you're reporting on is "native data" rather than a skewed version b/c of some sync hiccup(s). 

Another thing I might think about in this consideration is the rising importance of systems security -- the more parts you have, generally the more risk you'll have. Depending on how you plan to use Marketo (in-house vs. outsourced) it might be better or worse to use Marketo LPs. I'd think if you've got another team building pages on your behalf, it might be easier (less red tape) to have them work in an external system like Unbounce or LeadPages and just deal with the technical hurdles of integrating the two. If you've got folks in-house that will be using Marketo on the daily, I'd think it was easier (one system, not two logins) and more secure to go the Marketo LP route. Of course, there's exceptions to this based on your situation and security setup, but it might be something worth considering if you're laying a path for the long-term. 

[Dave_Roberts]

see also: https://nation.marketo.com/t5/product-discussions/set-default-values-directly-on-embedded-form/td-p/...

This posted to the community just today and might be an example of the type of thing(s) you'd need to consider with embedded forms (in general) and within the context of an Unbounce application.